Mother, son and daughter nabbed for brutal murder of elderly man

Port Elizabeth - A woman and her son and daughter are expected to appear in court in Port Elizabeth on Monday in connection with the murder of an elderly man in the city earlier this week.

Eastern Cape police commissioner Lt-Gen Liziwe Ntshinga on Saturday welcomed the "speedy arrests of three family members allegedly involved in the brutal murder of a 70-year-old man in Port Elizabeth", Eastern Cape police said in a statement posted on the official South African Police Service Facebook page.

"It is alleged that on Tuesday evening, 17 July 2018, Petrus Scholtz left home to attend to a customer in Kabega Park. He did electrical repairs in his own time. On Thursday morning, 19 July 2018, his body was found in bushes along a gravel road between Willow and Yellowood roads in Fairview, Walmer.

"According to police information, at about [8 am] on Wednesday, a person walking to work stumbled upon Scholtz’s body lying in bushes alongside the road. Both his hands and feet were bound with a nylon cord and his head covered and severely beaten. Police have opened a murder case."

Since the discovery, police had followed up several leads, and at about 6.30pm on Friday evening a team led by Mount Road policing cluster detectives commander Colonel Paul Orange, with Walmer detectives and the Hawks in Port Elizabeth, arrested a mother, 55, daughter, 35, and son, 31, at a house in Woltemade Street In Kabega Park. The circumstances and the motive for Scholtz’s murder had yet to be established.

Police recovered most of Scholtz’s possessions, including his tools and his Isuzu double cab bakkie. The bakkie had allegedly been sold to a person in North End and was seized on Saturday morning. The suspects would appear in the Port Elizabeth Magistrate’s Court on Monday.

Ntshinga applauded the swift following up on all information and encouraged the public to continue to report any suspicious behaviour in their neighbourhood.

"We cannot allow criminals to commit crime against innocent law abiding citizens. We need to remove them from society so that people can live without any fear of being attacked. Our investigating team has been working around the clock and have followed up on all information in their endeavours to arrest the suspects. Their investigation and hard work have yielded results," Ntshinga said.